In alphabetical order, more Americans come to Chautauqua from New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania than from any other states. In the Amphitheater on Old First Night, in years past it was tradition to take a poll of the audience to see which of these states had the greatest number of Chautauquans in attendance.
The winner of this popular poll was the state with the most people standing and raising arm(s) if standing was too difficult. Advanced planning helped. (It’s possible that evoking the loudest yells and whistles did, too.)
Pennsylvania has won its fair share of friendly OFN battles. Pennsylvanians returning home, however, know that their swing state is not nearly as unified, especially about November’s pivotal presidential and down-ballot election.
At 3 p.m. Saturday in the Hall of Philosophy, pollster extraordinaire Berwood Yost will give a talk titled “The Tipping Point State: Public Opinion and Political Preferences in Battleground Pennsylvania,” as part of the Contemporary Issues Forum, programmed by the Chautauqua Women’s Club.
“I’m endlessly interested in my state and its politics and policy,” Yost said, “(and) in helping people understand Pennsylvania — what makes it such a competitive state, why it’s so important in the election … and how it got to be a swing state.”
At Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, he wears four hats. Yost is the director of the Floyd Institute for Public Policy Analysis, the Floyd Institute’s Center for Opinion Research, and the Pennsylvania-focused Franklin and Marshall College Poll. He is also F&M’s senior adjunct research instructor of government.
F&M’s full-scale Center for Opinion Research pursues a wide range of scholarly research, client-oriented research, and outreach to organizations within the Lancaster community. It also conducts the F&M College Poll, which “tracks public attitudes toward public policy issues and political campaigns.”
According to Yost, “full-scale” means that the center takes responsibility for “all elements from start to finish for polls. There’s a call center, people who do all of the calling, we design all of the research elements, we analyze (the data).”
He estimated that over the past 40 years, he’s convened 200 to 300 focus groups. While many news programs purport to hold focus groups, Yost said he wouldn’t necessarily call them that. He runs his differently.
“We often do experiments where we manipulate a word or phrase and get really different results,” Yost said. “(They) give power to thoughts. It makes it interesting and difficult.”
Because it has been proven to be highly reliable, the F&M College Poll is one of the top opinion surveys in the United States. It is a go-to source for those involved in, keeping an eye on, and studying government, public policy and media in Pennsylvania.
Among the numerous outlets in which the F&M College Poll has appeared are CNN, the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio, The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post.
During his CIF talk, Yost said he may briefly touch on the evolution of polling, and polling methodology.
“It’s nothing like it was 20 years ago, let alone 40,” he said. “It’s important for people to understand, and (it’s important to) have non-partisan actors engaged in making the research and analysis happen.”
Yost publishes a newsletter about state politics and regularly writes for a general audience about Pennsylvania polling, politics and public policy.
Most often, he focuses on “the results and implications of political campaigns in the state and … changes within the state’s electorate.”
He is also a co-editor of Are All Politics Nationalized? Evidence from the 2020 Campaigns in Pennsylvania, published December 2022. This volume “explores how political campaigns communicate with voters about the issues that are most important to them.”
Local and state news often present the Center for Opinion Research’s findings and views on politics, public policy and healthcare issues. For instance, early last Tuesday morning, Yost was interviewed on Lancaster’s NBC affiliate, WGAL (Channel 8 TV), about Vice President Kamala Harris’ possible picks for her running mate. Additionally, journals in the fields of criminology, human rights, political science, psychology and public health have published his scholarly articles.
“My research is really multidisciplinary,” he said. “I get to study a whole bunch of interesting things because I have this tool that’s applicable in a lot of settings.”
Yost grew up outside Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, not far from Lancaster. At Penn State University, he earned a Bachelor of Social Science.
“From the time I went to college, I was interested in research,” he said. “I started at Penn State with Michael (L.) Young,” the scholar who edited 1990’s The Classics of Polling and wrote 1992’s Dictionary of Polling: The Language of Contemporary Opinion Research.
“Before that, he was a principal in a polling firm,” Yost said. “He was someone I took some classes with.”
While he worked as an intern at Penn State’s Center for Survey Research, Yost also earned his master’s degree in politics and American government at Temple University in Philadelphia.
He left Penn State to join G. Terry Madonna at Millersville University in Millersville, Pennsylvania. Together, they initiated the Keystone Poll in 1992. Yost became the poll’s methodologist. Madonna spoke at the Contemporary Issues Forum in 2015, 2016 and 2020, and retired in December 2020.
“I started the Center for Opinion Research at Millersville,” Yost said. “I grew it and moved it to Franklin and Marshall in 2003.” Madonna also left Millersville for F&M.
In 2008, as national polls were added when F&M entered into a partnership with Hearst TV, the Keystone Poll became the Franklin and Marshall College Poll. It has since become the longest-running statewide poll exclusively directed and produced in Pennsylvania.
Polling data have been essential for answering Yost’s questions about Pennsylvania’s role in national elections.
“I like to call it survey research or social research,” he said. “We use representative samples. Our research engages statistics and reliance on creativity and writing questions that are interesting.”
Yost clarified that, to him, “it combines rigorous methodological research and techniques with room to experiment to figure out the best ways of structuring questions to arrive at meaningful results. Take methodology and design, and analyze it to figure out what people have in common or what separates them.”
Using this technique, “within a setting,” he said he’s been able to study politics, policy, education, healthcare, and the Amish. For example, Yost is the “evaluator of record for the school district of Lancaster.”
And he’s a co-author of an article for The Journal of Plain Anabaptist Communities, comparing two similar — though not identical — health needs assessments of three Plain communities in Lancaster County (Amish and Mennonite).
The first random sample of 433 households surveyed by mail was conducted in 2014-15. The second assessment, in 2024, asked additional, COVID-19-related questions.
According to the article summary, the findings were “quite similar. … Plain respondents continue to have little diagnosed asthma, fewer mental health issues, and are more likely to have had prenatal care but otherwise their health is similar to that of other adults in Lancaster County.”
On Saturday, Yost will hone in on “how the rearranging of ideological and partisan identities within key demographic subgroups and geographic regions in Pennsylvania have created increased polarization and intense political competition.”
He will demonstrate “how these changes have created the conditions for competitive statewide races, particularly in races for national offices, at the same time that (they) have moved the state from Republican-leaning to Democratic-leaning.”
Given what’s known about Pennsylvania’s polarized electorate, Yost will then “discuss how voters are thinking about current issues and candidates, and how those beliefs may shape the outcomes of the presidential race.”
Yost’s well-respected, data-based insights about the Keystone State and national election will have relevance for audience members from all across the country. As Chautauqua’s Pennsylvanians scatter back home throughout their “tipping point state” and the November election approaches, there’s no doubt that voting will matter there, in every other swing state, and in each polarized voting district throughout the United States.
